Why Valve’s SteamOS Could Be Revolutionary – Information Weeks posits that Steam OS may be the next entertainment platform. Valve, the parent company of Steam, pioneered ownership of digital products by assigning each digital product a unique ID and then allowing the resale of digital products by the resale of the unique ID. (Kind of what ReDigi wanted to do). Steam’s platform free operating system allows for true mobility and no need to upgrade to the latest and greatest console system. (The XBOX 1 costs $500 this year).

If SteamOS can integrate into the television market and bring streaming video beyond video games, the platform free system could really catch on. It would need to strike licensing agreements, of course. I sometimes think that Amazon’s biggest competitor will be someone like Steam, not in the book business, but in the entertainment delivery business.InformationWeek

Fire OS 3.1 Now Available – Yesterday Amazon announced that it rolled out a new updated for the Kindle Fire. Update Link here. The new update brings integration to Goodreads. You can import all your purchases from Amazon into Goodreads and see your friends’ updates from within the App. Second screen allows you to turn your Tablet into a TV remote of sorts or you can use all the tablet functions while streaming a movie from your device to the television.

Australian Sea Slug Sex in all its Head-Stabbing Glory – Boy, I’m glad I’m not a slug. Apparently the males go around and inject their prostate gland fluid into foreheads of the females. Its called traumatic insemination and the most “famous offenders” are bed bugs. Slugs have a “double barrelled penis[] that consist[s] of a sperm-injecting penile bulb on one side and a syringe-like penile stylet on the other.” My lord, Mother Nature. Scientific America

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Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty.
You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

8 Comments

Does anyone remember the weird changling books that people talked about this year? Now after reading about the the sea slugs I worry that we will see BDSM Sea Slug changling books being published in the future.

Steam is such a brilliant service with such an impressive business model, I sure wouldn’t mind seeing Amazon take some notes from them — knowing you can get a $60 game 3 months later at $30, and 6 months later for $5 if you just for daily sales is awesome if you’re not wanting to play the latest game right now. The buzz in the office has already started for when the December Steam Sale will happen, it’s ridiculous — my husband has over 900 games in his Steam library and he’s played maybe 1/4 of them (but bought plenty of them at $1). Talk about TBR piles!

No sea slugs for me, please. I have a pair of giant land snails and their harpoon-style mating is really not for me.

I’ve been thinking for years that Steam/Valve will wind up running the world eventually (although they still won’t have produced half life 3).

They took something that could have been looked at as an impediment to obtaining games and turned it into both a community and a license to print money.

I could see them doing the same kinds of things to Amazon as they currently do to their competitors (things like not seeking exclusivity, like removing barriers to entry and like encouraging the lowest level indie contributors).

I had way too much fun reading about sea slug sex (say that ten times fast). They’re hermaphrodites – so each partner gets to traumatically inseminate the other. Way more interesting than that cuttlefish gang bang book.

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